


To Protect You

by RaiMedvedsky



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (Not kylo or rey though), Angst, Dark Rey, Dubious Consent, Emperor Kylo Ren, F/M, Forced Marriage, Humiliation, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Like real dark, Non-Consensual Oral Sex, Possessive Kylo Ren, Slow Burn, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, but you’d be real dark too, we’re all dark here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-15 01:03:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13602303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaiMedvedsky/pseuds/RaiMedvedsky
Summary: It starts in a First Order cell, with an ultimatum.“You don’t understand, little Jedi.” It sounds like something between the deepest insult and the most tender term of endearment. “I’m trying to save you.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> After about a decade out of the fanfic game, these crazy kids pulled me back in. This is a play on an idea I had for another fandom all those ages ago. My intention is to continue it with various vignettes of a dark, conflicted, smutty variety. Thanks for reading!

She’s been in a holding cell for two weeks when he finally comes to her, as best as she can tell. There’s no sun or moon on the ship, of course, and no one bothers to modulate the lighting to signal that it’s time to wake up or go to sleep. It’s always just a dull gray twilight. She’s going off of her body’s natural rhythm; the instinctual pull she feels to shut her eyes or drag them open, and the number of times she’s been fed. In any case, when she turns to face Kylo Ren as he enters her cell, there are 10 little marks scratched into her wall. 

 

“I’m … sorry I didn’t come sooner,” he says in the sad, low voice that made her want to kiss his pain away that night in the hut, back when she thought she could save him. 

 

She’s wondering now if it’s actually been longer than two weeks. She arrived unconscious—as if they could have taken her any other way, she thinks with an almost-smirk—and all things considered, it’s possible she spent a few days coming-to. Then there was the fever somewhere in the middle, where she might have let a day or two slip by un-ticked. The thought makes her cock her head to the side and squint, her eyebrows drawing together in concentration. 

 

“It was difficult to—“

 

“—you did come sooner,” Rey says, not looking into those always-almost-tearful eyes of his as she interrupts. “You were here when I was sick.”

 

It’s just flashes from her end, the sensation of a gloved hand pressed against her hot forehead, but when she reaches out with the Force she can see it from his perspective. Still foggy, muddied by his efforts to block her out and a long list of colorful emotions she’d rather not dig into, but she can at least see for certain that yes, he came to her. He sat by her bed. He stroked her hair. He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her cheekbones, lips trembling all the while. 

 

His face tightens, hardens, and he nods curtly. _Enough with the pleasantries then_ , that nod says. It’s hard to know if she’s hearing him speak over their bond or she just knows him that well, and she isn’t sure which would be worse. 

 

So Rey isn’t surprised when he barrels forward into the rest of the conversation as if this thing between them—whatever it is—is a simple matter of fact. As if they’ve spoken at length about how he feels about her, how she feels about him, what they are to one another. 

 

“I’d have brought you right to my quarters where you belong, but your shortsightedness the last time you were on the _Supremacy_ has complicated matters.”

  
She doesn’t say anything to that, though she’d be rolling her eyes if she had the strength to. She does eventually raise an eyebrow, giving him the message (as silently and sardonically as she pleases) that he should get to the point. He launches into a stilted monologue about how he’d _had_ to lay the blame for Snoke’s death on her, and how he’s in too deep to suddenly change the narrative. He feels dreadful, she can tell, and he’s trying to convince himself he’s got a handle on the whole situation. She doesn’t mean to tune him out, but she does. 

 

Rey is tired. She’s weak. She was tired and weak two-or-however-many weeks ago when the Knights of Ren dragged her back to the _Supremacy_ , weak from months of scrambling and scavenging and sneaking around for scraps. 

 

Being one of the last living members of the Resistance had felt a lot like dealing in junk on Jakku, as it turned out, though at least she’d had plenty of company. Rose would babble on sweetly for hours at a time, soaking up Rey’s friendship like she’d won some kind of prize. Finn would tussle her hair and make terrible attempts at jokes and flit back and forth between making moon eyes at Rose and Poe. Poe would flit back and forth between making moon eyes at, well, literally everyone. They’d tell stories before bed, on the nights it was safe to sleep at all, and then curl up in one familiar pile. Chewie would face the wall, the porgs he couldn’t seem to shake cuddling under his arms, and Rose and Rey would sleep with their heads against his furry back. Most nights, too scared and cold for shyness, Poe and Finn would end up sandwiched right between them. Rey would wake up with both of her hands being held, a head on her stomach, a paw whacking her in the face, a cooing porg shedding all over her clothes. It was war, and it was hell, but it was a home. 

 

He’s taken it away from her. And now she’s even more tired, and a lot weaker, and she’s starting to forget what it felt like to have so many hands to hold. 

 

She tunes back in when he says “the _traitor_ ,” with a growl, and finally meets his gaze. He’s scowling, but he falters a little when their eyes meet. 

 

“Are they dead?” She’d expected her voice to wobble under the weight of those words, but she sounds resolute. 

 

“Yes,” he says. “They’re all dead.” There’s a beat of silence, a look that’s almost regret. “Some of them I wouldn’t have wanted to save, even for you—others, I didn’t have a choice.”

 

She can see what he means by the flashes of memory ricocheting toward her. Finn was executed, of course, put to death in front of the men he’d once called brothers. Poe, being Poe, had gone out in a blaze of glory with a stolen blaster just moments behind him. Leia had saved her son the trouble by succumbing to an infected wound a few days after their capture. And Rose—Ren would have spared Rose, could have stomached keeping her alive for the sake of presenting her to Rey as some twisted token of affection—had died in the Falcon alongside Chewie, killed in the blast that knocked Rey out and left the rest of them sitting ducks. 

 

“I’ve come to offer you a … proposition,” he says, and now he’s the one looking away. Rey tucks her legs up to her chest, perching her chin on her knees and idly playing with a bracelet Rose had woven her from leather scraps during one of their nights on guard duty. 

 

“What kind of proposition, oh mighty Supreme Leader?” Her voice is droll, because what’s the point? It’s over. Everyone she’s ever loved is dead except for _him_ , this misguided soulmate she spun up for herself out of bits of fantasy. He’s all she has now, and she hates him. And she knows—she _feels in her bones—_ that he misses the way she was briefly so sweet with him, back when they first felt the fateful stirrings of their bond and she started to see the Light in his heart. She knows her sarcasm cuts him deep now, and that’s something. 

 

And it works, because each of his features seems to be vibrating on their own frequency. 

 

“Rey, I’m not all-powerful. I may be the de-facto ruler _for now_ , but Snoke has had other apprentices. I’m the most powerful person in the First Order, but not by enough to survive a real coup. I’m trying to build something—something _for us_ —but unless I kill every person who might conceivably betray me, I need to tread lightly.”

 

The fury leaves him ever-so-gently, and his shoulders sink down as he sighs. 

 

“Which is why,” he says, sweeping his cowl to the side and sitting on the edge of her cot. “Which is why…”

 

She can’t stop the twinge of compassionate curiosity as he starts to pick at her blanket like it’s the most interesting textile in the galaxy, but she pushes it down again almost immediately. She forces a scowl, refusing to care why he might suddenly seem so ashamed of himself.

 

“Stop fidgeting,” she says through clenched teeth, “and get the kriff on with it.”

 

Another heavy sigh, and he lets his hair fall down over his forehead before pushing it back again. He’s girding himself for something. Rey’s heart starts to race, his anxiety triggering and amplifying her own over their connection. She’s about to snap at him again when he finally speaks. 

 

“Which is why you need to marry me.”

 

Her skin goes icy and hot at the same time, her rage only flamed by the fact that once, however briefly, she’d wanted—not this, no, never this—but she wanted something _like_ this. She’d come to him thinking she could turn him back to the Light, knowing in her heart that her soul would be the bait for his conversion. And then again, in the throne room, fighting alongside him, she’d imagined those arms wrapping around her and never letting her go. 

 

But this is not that. This is the ruler of a regime that’s currently crushing the galaxy, sitting in the cell he’s kept her in for days, and suddenly she can’t stop laughing. Through the tears that spring up along with her giggle, she thinks he looks both crushed and concerned, as if he’s not sure whether to be hurt by her rejection or worried about her hysterical outburst. 

 

“No,” she finally chokes out, still laughing. The cackle is taking on a cruel tint to it now, and she thrives on the tendrils of regret she can feel flickering out across their bond. “ _Hell_ no, you kriffing nerve burner.”

 

She stands up from the bed, just barely tall enough to look down at him as he sits, and opens her mouth to tell him _just how disgusted she is by him_ when he grabs her chin and pulls her into a kiss. 

 

It’s angry, _he’s angry_ , and somehow he’s got her rolled onto her back and caged by his massive body before she’s even blinked. She’s kissed before, but never like this, and she’s not quite stunned enough to ignore that objectively, physically, it all feels rather… nice. He’s so warm compared to the cell she’s been rattling around in, and if she doesn’t feel safe, exactly, she at least feels safe from everything except him. 

 

Her complacency seems to calm him, and after a few moments he breaks away just enough to look at her. 

 

“You don’t understand, little Jedi.” It sounds like something between the deepest insult and the most tender term of endearment. “I’m trying to save you.”

 

His forehead rests against hers as her eyes widen. 

 

“As far as the First Order is concerned, you’re the last of your kind,” he murmurs, bringing one hand to brush against her cheek as the other holds him aloft above her. “As far as they’re concerned, you killed Snoke. Death would be too good for you.”

 

Her heart is in her throat as he gently kisses her again, this time teasing his tongue just past her lips. He’s kissing her like she’s precious to him, and he’s trembling like he wants to kill her. 

 

“I just,” he dips his head down to kiss her again, a little more hungrily, “I wish you would just _trust me._ ”

  
When he goes in for another kiss, she narrows her eyes and flings her head to the side. His lips end up on her ear as she fumes. 

 

“Alright,” he murmurs. “Alright.”

 

He pulls them upright, but keeps a hand wrapped vice-like around her wrist and uses the Force to guide her face to look at him. 

 

“They want to kill you,” he says. 

 

“Fine,” she spits. “Good.”

 

“They want to kill you _slowly._ ”

 

She shrugs, steeling her resolve with images of Finn and Poe facing certain death. Hadn’t she survived a childhood of loneliness and hardship? Hadn’t she fought in a hopeless war? Hadn’t she been utterly betrayed by a man she knew, in the depths of her wasted heart, was her only match in the galaxy?

 

“I seriously doubt any of your mindless acolytes could do worse to me than _you’ve_ already done.” She digs her fingers into the hand holding her wrist, drawing him closer as she sneers at him. “I will face whatever death they dream up for me with the honor you so sorely lack.”

 

She thinks his eyes flutter shut in pain because her words ring true, and she feels a tiny surge of triumph. But when they open and refocus on her, she suddenly sees that he pities her. She wishes it made her skin crawl, or made her want to hit him, but it feels like all the air has left the room. 

 

“Rey.”

 

Her name is such a little thing, but his voice is so broken it seems to have a hundred pieces. 

 

And suddenly she knows that it’s so awful he can’t tell her, so she grips his hand tighter and grits her teeth and forces the truth straight out of his skull. She sees his glowering council, she hears their sneering and knows they want her humiliated, they want her _broken_ , and oh oh oh each one of them has a prettier way to do it than the one before. 

 

The last Jedi, Snoke’s assassin, the sad little ember that could burst into a savage flame and reignite the Resistance, if only given a little nudge. An execution, then, is out of the question. Rey can’t be a martyr. A life in captivity? Torture? Perhaps. But there’s _something else…_

 

He pushes her out, his mind flailing and scrambling like a scared child. He’s trying to _spare_ her the mere thought of something, and it turns her stomach. So she pushes harder. 

 

It takes a few moments for her to realize what she’s seeing, and then she pulls back with a jolt. 

 

_The hero of the Resistance in chains, primped and powdered like a dancing slave girl, passed from lap to lap in a drugged haze as the generals of the First Order laugh and enjoy their dinner. Their hands are all over her, they’ve all had her, and at this point she’s more of an accessory than an object of desire. She was a trophy once, to be trotted out on all occasions for the powerful to gloat over her subjugation as she thrashed and screamed, but now she longs for the nights they come for her, a brief journey up into the light and air to break the endless nothingness of life in a cell, her only visitors the stormtroopers who know no one will ever punish them for taking—_

 

He grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her out of the horrifying reverie. 

 

“The only way I could stop it was to make you mine,” he spits out. “I don’t have the power to let you go, to, to… absolve you. They’d all turn on me. Rey, you have to _belong to me_ , or they’re going to take turns breaking you. They’re going to turn you into a symbol of failure and misery to shame the rest of the Rebel scum.”

 

She stares just to the side of him, her eyes unfocused, as she processes her new reality. She exhales. She knows she can survive this, but she wish she didn’t have to. 

 

“You could just kill me, if you care so much,” she mutters. “I’m sure no one would begrudge their Supreme Leader a sudden fit of rage that ended with one dead little Jedi on the floor of a cell. Or are you too selfish to give me that?”

 

His silence tells her he is. He loves her, in his twisted way, or at least feels entitled to her. Whether she’s to be his consort or his nemesis, he will not be made to do without. She knows, for the same reason, that he won’t aid her escape. He’s probably telling himself it’s no use because the fleet would tear apart the galaxy looking for her, but if he’s being honest with himself he must realize he’d be the one doing the searching before long. He may feel regret and shame at the circumstances of his proposal, but he’s still desperate to have her. 

 

“So am I to believe,” she exhales, straightening her spine. “Am I to believe that your followers would accept me as their… empress?” 

 

She knows as soon as she chokes the ugly word out that it’s not true. Their bond is _so_ strong, now that they’re sitting here feeding off of one another’s energy, and the flow of thoughts between them is becoming nearly effortless. Yes, an empress, but in name only. He’s going to protect her by making them think he’s taken personal charge of her life sentence of torture and submission. He’d replace the chains with a crown, swap the scandalous lingerie from his generals’ visions for silk gowns dripping with blood-red gemstones. But they still expect her to be a beautiful, broken prisoner. She would never be his equal, but as his own _personal_ plaything she might be spared the worst of it. 

 

She shakes her head, swallowing hard. “You’re sick, Kylo Ren. You’re kriffing demented if you think for one minute I would _choose_ , would _consent_ —“

 

He holds up his hand to stop her. 

 

“I’ll be as good to you as I can be,” he says, slipping down onto one knee before her. She balks at the gesture, but he stays put. “I’ll be as good to you as I wanted to be back then, when we fought beside each other to kill Snoke. Between us, I swear on the stars, Rey, there will be nothing but honesty. I cannot promise you I’ll be gentle, and you know I’m anything but kriffing kind. But…” 

 

He’s uncomfortable with the tenderness of the speech, and he clenches his jaw and rolls his eyes. 

 

“Look, scavenger, it’s me or them. Stand beside me, share my bed, give me an heir. If you choose to live that life, I can keep you from dying alone in here after years as the First Order’s personal punching bag and whore.”

 

Tears prickle at the edge of Rey’s vision. “How utterly _selfless_ of you, Ben,” she says with a mouth full of venom. 

 

But she’s already placing her hand in his, and she’s out the cell door practically before he can unlock it. 

 

She knows she’ll survive whatever comes. But this way, at least, she has some chance of seeing the whole lot of them burn.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey sees a few different sides of the man she's being forced to marry. This is where there starts to be some smut. Content notes: Dubcon, oral, masturbation, tangential mention of a humiliation fetish.

He sets a date for the wedding—even someone as powerful as Kylo Ren needs time to prepare for such an elaborate, gloating display—and moves her into a modest suite near his own. Rey gets three days to mull over what she’s agreed to before he comes to her again. 

 

Kylo mumbles out an explanation for his visit, something about the men beginning to wonder when he’s going to come claim his prize. 

 

“But I won’t force you,” he says, voice so low and austere. Rey scoffs.

 

“If you don’t force me, you’ll never have me.”

 

She fully expects the moment of white-hot rage that pierces through their bond like a spike to her skull, but she’s caught off guard when it passes almost instantly, replaced by something like smugness. 

 

“We’ll see about that, little Jedi,” he coos. And her mind is filled with filthy images of the pair of them—images she’s conjured up a thousand times before. She clenches her jaw, furious with herself for ever wanting him. And worse, for being weak enough that he can thumb through her darkest fantasies whenever he damn pleases. 

 

She’s not sure that she’s actually grateful when he doesn’t try to touch her that night. The anticipatory stare he fixes her with through their entire meal feels just as bad, if not worse.

 

* * *

 

 

When he visits the next day, he tells her again that he’ll wait for her. But there’s no sleek smugness this time; something in him seems to have come unhinged in their hours apart, and he speaks with all the desperation of a star-crossed lover.

 

“What we have…what we have is _glorious,_ Rey, _singular_ across all the systems,” he says, those haunted eyes boring into her and killing her appetite before she can try the feast he’s brought for them. “I would never— _could_ never—taint such a powerful, beautiful bond by forcing myself on you.”

 

He must see her face go pale, because he reaches out, viper-quick, to grab her hand before she can pull it under the table. He grips her fingers so hard she can hear the leather of his glove creak. 

 

“I will conduct myself with honor until you understand what a gift the Force has given us,” he murmurs. His soft, soothing voice is in sharp contrast with the bruising grip on her hand. Rey thinks to herself that this is how Kylo is, how he always will be: there is constant war in him, and life at his side will mean dealing with all of his demons at once. He loves her, like a sweet young boy, and he needs her, like a tortured soul. He wants her in a way that makes his blood sing like fire and he’s as certain he deserves her as if he owned the very air she breathes. Rey once thought that part of him hated her, and maybe he once did—hated the scrawny desert rat who made him question his skills and self-control. But now any distaste she feels has the decided tint of self-loathing; he’s certain she’s a goddess, and if he rages at her it’s only because she will not accept his inadequate attempts at worship. 

 

When he finally leaves for the night, he holds her in a bruising grip and kisses her forehead with trembling lips.

 

* * *

 

He stays away on the third and fourth night, and on the fifth he’s all business, completely void of visible emotion. Rey wonders how many hours he’s had to meditate to get there. She can’t quite dive into his mind with her usual ease, and that makes her think he’s spent the better part of the day dampening his thoughts. 

 

Rey’s been restless, even more restless here in this unassuming suite than she felt languishing in an actual cell. The cool gray light of her prison helped her tune out her thoughts, but the black walls, bright lights, and warm air of her new accommodations makes her feel twitchy, like she might scream out loud at any moment or shimmy straight out of her skin. And now Kylo has the nerve to slink into her presence with a quiet mind.

 

He’s in the middle of explaining why he’s having a permanent residence furnished for the royal family—on the ship his officers will always be coming and going and poking their noses in the couple’s business, but they won’t be able to tell Rey is broken if she’s hidden away in an opulent cage somewhere—when she snaps, stabbing her fork so hard into a slice of meat that he freezes mid-sentence and slowly raises an eyebrow. Rey feels wild; jaw clenched, chest heaving. She has no real idea why. 

 

“Take. Off. That. Mask.” 

 

Her voice is like grit blasting through her grimace. 

 

Kylo looks at her like she’s gone mad, and speaks to her like she’s some kind of feral child who might bite if he moves too fast. 

 

“Rey,” he draws her name out, maintaining his general air of stoicism, “do you see me wearing a mask?”

 

She rolls her eyes. “Not a physical one,” she mutters. 

  
The shift in his expression from condescending concern to guilty resignation tells her that he gets her meaning, but his mind is still quiet. She’s used to everything he says, every look he gives her, coming part and parcel with at least the tiniest whisper of his feelings, his secrets. She’s sure she could drive into his thoughts like a saber if she wanted, but it would be violent and painful for them both.  

 

She feels…alone. And unimportant. And infuriated that it bothers her to be so. 

 

The Emperor shifts under the weight of her gaze, darting his own eyes to the side.   


 

“If you’d just let me finish, Rey, I’d be happy to let you get back to your evening in peace,” he fixes his cowl, sits up straighter, sets his face with the same void, vaguely smug expression he might have while speaking to Hux. She digs her nails so hard into her palms that she knows she’ll have tiny crescent bruises in the morning. 

 

“As I was saying,” he continues, shields firmly locked back into place, “the seasonal palaces will give you the protection and privacy we need to make this work. If you traveled with me, all of the most powerful citizens of the empire would expect me to trot you out for their events so they could see what had become of you. And officers visiting the ship to meet with me, well—without the veneer of finery expected at some planet-bound ball, they’d want confirmation you were chained to a bed somewhere screaming in agony, if not kneeling naked by my feet in the throne room.”

 

Rey’s rising anger has little to do with this particular plan, but she fixates on it to keep from strangling him. 

 

“I don’t see why that means I have to go live alone in some tomb you’ve had dusted off for me,” she spits. “You’re their emperor, why should they expect anything at all? Just tell them your little _doll_ isn’t for public display.”

 

The groan he lets out is almost emotive. Almost. “Running this empire is nothing less than an elaborate chess match. If my people, my soldiers, think you’re constantly close by and being kept away from them, they’ll be curious about my intentions. If I lock you away somewhere and only a privileged few get to visit on the rarest occasions, they’ll be satisfied.”

 

It hits her then, the reality of what her new life will be. He’ll try to surround her with servants she can trust, but he’s already told her that the truth must stay between them. She can have maids and cooks and palace guards who perhaps believe that their horrifying emperor loves the Jedi, in his twisted way, and wants respect and warmth granted to his whore when he isn’t at home. But even they have to believe that she is a tortured plaything. His grand, generous plan is to give her a palace where she can read and take walks and confide in no one for the rest of her life. 

 

Her head snaps up, eyes wild with fury, when she hears his voice in her head. 

 

_You won’t be alone long. Not if I have anything to do with it._

 

She’s angry enough about the one-sided invasion of privacy, but then he finishes his thought.

 

_And if you’re not pregnant when I leave you at the palace, I’m sure it won't take more than another visit or two._

 

That’s when she lunges for his mind. She doesn’t care how much it hurts to fight through his years of training and hours of focused mediation. She wants his skull to burn with her presence, and she wants to tear apart his facade of stoic strength. He’s tough, the well-trained brat, and she’s stalked around to his side of the dinner table before she even realizes she’s stood up. He’s yelling at her, warning her, threatening her. She doesn’t hear. When he grabs her wrist in a bruising grip, she wraps her own hand around his arm, locking the pair of them together as she draws their faces close.

 

_There._

 

She finally feels a trickle of his conscious _(no Rey kriff kriff kriff fucking idiot little Jedi no)_ and reaches out with her own laser-sharp focus, turning the drip into a flood of thoughts and emotions. She surges forward, only vaguely aware that she’s screaming, and soon her shrieks of pain morph into cruel laughter. Kyle’s face is somehow even paler than usual. 

 

“You’ve been jerking off to keep yourself from doing anything…anything… _unseemly_ ,” Rey gasps out, nearly doubled over in amusement over the stilted word choices of his internal monologue. She knows this isn't like her. She knows she's reaching her limit and coming undone. But what the hell is she supposed to do about it? Rey has never understood the appeal of the Dark so much as she does in this moment, when Kylo’s anguish is flowing through her veins and strengthening the beat of her heart. 

 

“And it’s _stopped kriffing working_ ," she laughs. “You spent all day meditating because you needed to stop rubbing yourself raw.” 

 

Rey projects his memories back at him, flashes of mornings and nights and afternoons when he’d frantically jerked off to thoughts of her naked, dancing, fighting, smiling, crying. She’s known for a long time now that she wields enormous power over the man, but the sheer level of obsession comes as a surprise. If she wasn’t already living a nightmare, the knowledge might scare her. 

 

Kylo’s horror and embarrassment is slowly shifting toward rage, but Rey doesn’t care. She can't stop now. She feels more alive, more in control, more powerful than she has since her capture. Emboldened, she starts to narrate a particularly humiliating fantasy he keeps having at the most inopportune moments; he’s sitting in a council meeting and suddenly feels over the Force that Rey is in bed with someone else. She fills in details with dramatic flair, knowing he’ll wonder if she’s using some real-life Rebel lover for reference, and taunts him for all the times this little daydream has consumed him. At least some part of him is aroused by her derision, and it shows all over his face. 

 

“It’s not the masochism that surprises me,” she concludes with a smirk, “it’s the fact that the mighty _Emperor Ren_ has so little self control.”

 

He exhales slowly, like he’s trying to deflate. “You’re going to make me do something we’ll both regret,” he says, voice as deep and soft as distant thunder. Rey spreads out her arms in mocking invitation. 

 

“Oh Ben," she replies, voice and smile so sugary sweet. "There's  nothing I could possibly regret more than having met you in the first place."

 

She’s impressed that even in his surge of blind rage, his instinct is to Force choke her instead of using his hands. If the roles were reversed, Rey muses, she would have used her hands. She idly wonders if he'll kill her. It wasn't consciously her aim, but goading him like this wouldn't be a bad way to get the job done. Oh, she’d love to be strong and bold and live to fight another day for the small price of her body, heart, freedom, and pride. But it is an exhausting thing to survive when all reason to hope is gone, and Rey isn’t too stubborn to take an easy out.

 

Besides, she thinks as her vision starts to darken and Kylo’s livid face blurs out of sight; it’s nothing more than wishful thinking. He can never kill her in an uninhibited fit of rage, because her sighs of relief—however silent, however deeply buried in her subconscious—will call him back from the brink. She can feel that happening now, as his fury briefly deepens all the more at the realization that she’d choose death over his _generous_ offer. She’s flying through the room in the next moment, her traitorous lungs suddenly, painfully filling up with air just in time for her body to slam down onto the bed, knocking the wind right back out.

 

Rey isn’t stupid, but she’s just gone from a manic episode of laughter to hypoxia to what might prove to be a mild concussion, so for a moment she thinks Kylo has simply pushed her away in disgust. She blinks back into a clear head just as he moves to loom above her, so by the time he crawls onto the bed beside her and grabs her by the jaw it all seems much more clear. 

 

“You said you wouldn’t—“

 

“Shut up, little Jedi.”

 

Kyle crushes his mouth to hers, and she melts into him before she can stop herself. It’s only the second time he’s kissed her—the first was that terrible night in her cell—and she’s struck, once again, by how terribly sublime it feels. For the briefest moment she feels it; a heady sense of destiny crackling between them. He’s letting her into his head willingly now, and she can feel that his anger at her suicidal ideations is balanced by regret for treating her this way, and desire to make amends. It’s—well, it’s not quite sweet, but it’s something. 

 

And his hands, she thinks, _Maker, his hands_. She’s not sure when he took his gloves off, but she feels so small with his warm, calloused palms engulfing most of her head.

 

But then those hands move lower, roughly running down her ribs to rest on her hips, and his body is getting heavier on top of hers, and she knows he can take whatever he wants. 

 

“Kylo…” she whimpers in the tiny moment he takes to breath. “Don’t—“

 

He shushes her. 

 

“Let me take care of you,” he growls. 

 

Her face flushes as he locks eyes on her and slides down her body, hooking his thumbs into her soft gray leggings to drag them down with him as he comes to kneel at the edge of her bed. She can see plainly that he thinks this will give him some sort of release without violating her, that he’s sure she’ll love it by the time he’s done.   


 

“I don’t want that,” she stammers. “I don’t want anything like that.”

 

And then he chuckles, damn him, and slides those warm hands up her bare, goose-bumped thighs. She can feel herself getting wet by the time his fingers start to tease her dark curls. 

 

“Don’t be difficult,” he murmurs, eyes darkening as he slips a finger between her slick folds. “Let me make you feel good.”

 

Rey tries half-heartedly to fight him off, her mind and hands both pushing at him, her legs kicking out at his immovable chest. Even when he settles between her thighs and runs his tongue up her quivering sex, she still squirms and shoves and pleads. Even when he pushes two, then three fingers inside of her, stretching her in a way no one has before—even when she _loves_ it—she knows she’ll never forgive herself for giving in, so she keeps fighting. 

 

It’s not until he’s been sucking and nibbling at her clit for long enough to bring her nearly to the brink that he pauses, raising his head up to look at her again. They stare each other down in silence for a moment, his eyes blown-out black in lust and her cheeks flushed. 

 

“Tell me to stop, beautiful,” he murmurs, a smirk forming on his sticky lips. 

 

With a growl, Rey grabs his hair and shoves him back into place, tensing up all over when he laughs into her cunt before carrying on. When she’s so close she’s not sure she could speak if she tried, he replaces his tongue with fingers, fucking with one hand and abusing her clit with the other. 

 

“You’re right, Rey,” he says, his breath falling hot on her left hip. “I think about you all the time. I want you _all the time_. I want you beneath me, on top of me. I want you battered and bruised and covered in my seed, and I want you sitting on my throne while I worship every perfect inch of you. I _need_ you. It’s pathetic.”

 

She’s climbing even higher at his words in spite of herself, making sounds she can barely recognize. 

 

He shifts up onto the bed and snakes one hand up to her neck, squeezing lightly before he tangles his fingers into her hair and tugs her upright. She’s crowded up against the corner, half-sitting, as he crouches next to her and holds her head back at a painful angle. His other hand is still working between her legs, and it’s like nothing she’s ever known before. Rey has come before, by her own hand and with the few partners she’s found herself fumbling around with throughout the years, but Kylo’s efforts make everything that came before seem like just that—fumbling. The build-up is already more intense than any climax she’s ever had. And it’s all happening pressed up against the matte black walls of an Empirical battleship, with the eyes of a man who’s stolen everything from her fixed hard on her own. Her eyelids flutter as she considers slipping into some more forgivable fantasy, but a sharp tug at her hair makes her gasp, makes her keep her eyes on his face as her swollen lips part for yet another moan. 

 

“That made you even wetter,” he murmurs, leaning forward and nipping at her ear. “Poor little Jedi, forced into submission by a knight of the Dark. Do you like how easily I can take what I want from you? Do you like it when I hurt you? I hope you do, because I can’t help myself.”

 

His fingers slow, and he kisses his way back to her mouth before leaning back enough to look into her eyes. She’s _so_ close—somehow it seems like he’s pushed her even closer by switching to an agonizingly slow pace, his fingers just barely moving inside her as his thumb lazily brushes around her clit—and he tightens his grip on her hair to get her attention.

 

“Stay with me,” he murmurs. “Right here. Stay right at the edge with me until I tell you to come.” Kriff, if that doesn’t almost set her right off. “There’s something you need to remember, little Jedi, and you’re not going to get what you need until I’m sure you understand.”

 

Rey whimpers into his chest, burrowing there to avoid looking at him. He seems satisfied enough at the action, because he doesn’t force her back into eye contact. The hand in her hair lowers, splaying down her back to cradle her tenderly in contrast with his words. 

 

“Never forget that part of me wants exactly what you’re afraid of,” he whispers. “Since the moment I first saw you, first picked you up in my arms, I’ve wanted to lock you in my room and make you forget everything but the way I feel inside you. Destroying your spirit and keeping you as a beautiful little pet is one of my darkest fantasies, Rey, and now I have you.”

  
His fingers move deeper, faster, filling the room with the sound and smell of her arousal. 

 

“I’m not just protecting you from them. I’m protecting you from myself.”

 

He bites her neck so hard she screams, then tongues at the bruise. 

 

“I want you by my side forever. But if you continue to fight me at every turn, I could just as soon break you. Easily. Now come on my fingers like a good girl.”

 

She sees stars. She can’t stifle the thought that pulsing and clenching around his hand is better than anything she’s ever felt before, and she feels the low growl this inspires in him as it rumbles through his chest. “Every time, Rey,” he hisses. “It’s going to be like this every single time.”

 

He flips her onto her stomach while she’s still coming down, thrusting his fingers back into her cunt as she tries to get her bearings. 

 

“Do you want me to fuck you, scavenger?” he murmurs, biting at her abused neck and grinding his fierce erection into her ass. He’s working her up to another orgasm, but she manages to shake her head. He scoffs.

 

“Don’t lie to yourself,” he mutters, clearly more than a little put out. Rey hears the metallic clink of a belt being undone, but she doesn’t see the point in fighting him. His warning still rings in her ears, and she knows this is inevitable. It might as well happen now, when she’s so turned on she can barely think. Better that than on their wedding night, when she knows she’ll be too repulsed and terrified by the day’s events to take any physical pleasure in the act. 

 

“Sorry, beautiful,” she feels the naked heat of his thick erection against her ass, but then his hand comes up to squeeze at her skin before wrapping around the base of his cock. She can feel him stroking it, his body still pressed up against hers as their legs tangle together. “You won’t get it until you beg for it. Are you ready to beg for it?”

 

He answers her silence by fucking her faster with his fingers, and she quickly reaches a peak she didn’t even know was in sight. This second orgasm is no less powerful, and wrings so much out of her that it almost hurts. Hot ropes of his spend hit her ass and back a moment after, punctuated with a pained groan from the man bracing himself on his knees above her. For a moment, then, they’re both still. His mind and body soften, satiated, while every fiber in her hardens. 

 

“You’re wondering if I’d like it if you stayed and held me,” she says cooly. “I wouldn’t.”

 

But he doesn’t scurry away in shame; Kylo kisses his way up her spine and forces her to crane her neck and kiss his lips, then uses one of the napkins from their dinner to wipe her backside clean. 

 

“I’ll be traveling until the wedding,” he murmurs. “My crew knows to give you a wide berth, but it’s not safe for you to walk around yet. The droids will come with food three times a day. Your tablet is capable of communicating only with my private channel, and I can be back in a few hours if anything goes wrong.”

 

Rey wonders what could possibly go more wrong. 

 

“Think about what you can live with giving me,” he says from the doorway. “Or eventually I’m just going to take it all.”

 

The door slides shut, and she falls into a dreamless sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, thanks for all the lovely feedback! I'm still figuring out what the exact format of this story will be—obviously this chapter follows pretty closely after the second one, but once the world is established I might start to hop around in time a bit more. My goal is to update at least once a week until it feels wrapped up. Hope you've enjoyed this latest installment!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wedding is on Coruscant, as good a hub as any for receiving far-flung dignitaries of the new empire. Rey hates it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the lovely feedback. I'll keep it coming as long as you do.

The wedding is on Coruscant, as good a hub as any for receiving far-flung dignitaries of the new empire. Rey hates it. After years surrounded by nothing but sand on Jakku, it’s true that open spaces make her a bit anxious. But cities packed with buildings and crowds are even worse. It makes her miss the more familiar cramped quarters of the Falcon, and the little huts on Luke’s island that always managed to be too cold from the rain or too hot from a roaring fire. She’d been so hot that night she touched Kylo over the Force Bond; she’d arrived soaked to the bone and freezing, but after ten minutes of talking to him in that tiny room the water had practically steamed off of her. 

 

Her mind keeps wandering to places she’ll never see again, but she supposes it’s fitting to think about spaces she’s shared with her husband-to-be—even if they’d never quite managed to be in the same place at the same time. 

 

As a droid fastens her into her dress—formfitting black lace in a deceptively modest style, with a neck so high she’s trying not to choke but only a few designs in red silk thread hiding her nipples and sex from view—she wonders what might have happened had she met Ben Solo instead of Kylo Ren. What if she’d awakened to the Force as a child, so Luke could track her down on Jakku and bring her to study at his temple? What if she’d had a luckier parting from her parents, and wound up the ward of some acquaintance of General Organa’s? What if she’d left the desert instead of holding out hope for a family reunion, and crossed paths with Kylo when he wasn’t quite so far gone down the path of a Sith Lord? 

 

She can see each possibility as clearly as if they’ve all played out in some universe or another; a young Rey stowing away on the Falcon and forming a fast friendship with Han. And then Leia, concerned for the wily youngling’s safety and envious of Han’s replacement child, would take Rey under her wing as well. She would have awakened to the Force and formed a Bond with Kylo in one fell swoop, her intense love for his parents and anguish at their loss bridging light-years so she might finally understand the ghost who haunted them. She would sneak away on a mission to bring him back to the Light, shocking no one more than Kylo when she succeeded. 

 

Her favorite path to muse on is the one where they meet when she’s a scared little girl and he’s a surly teen. They would have a fast and inexplicable friendship, and innocent little Rey would tell him one morning that she saw the dark lord whispering to Ben in his dreams. Her fear would shock him back to the Light, and yes, their love would make them horrible Jedi knights once she grew up, but they’d forge their own path with Luke’s blessing. 

 

But Rey knows she’s not being entirely truthful with herself. Given just the tiniest turn of destiny, Luke would sense their fateful connection too early and fear the power of their future passion. His fretting would actually serve to push his nephew to the dark side all the more quickly. In some worlds Ben would take a screaming young Rey with him when he slaughtered the temple, and with Snoke’s help mold her into a creature of dark, deadly beauty meant to stand at his side forever. In others he would dump her on a nowhere planet for safe keeping, or leave her behind in the smoldering rubble with Luke. And then she’d find her way into the Resistance, and he would burn with a sense of ownership the first time he saw her fully grown, and they’d end up right where they were right now.

 

Here, with Rey’s hair half-piled onto her head in lose ringlets, her dress and curls dripping with rubies that glitter like drops of blood. Her makeup is so exquisite she hardly recognizes herself, and through the seductive gown her body looks perfectly toned and tan. She’s even started to have some sensuous curves, thanks to eight weeks of three square meals and nothing to do but jog back and forth across her bedroom. She knows Kylo will approve. He loves her scrappy and scrawny, but her life sentence is to look like a kept courtesan, a ripe body groomed only to serve his pleasure. 

 

“Did you enjoy our time apart?” Kylo asks from the doorway. Their eyes meet in the mirror before he goes back to taking her in from head to toe. Rey is vaguely surprised to see him before the ceremony, but she’s also ignored several missives from him over the previous weeks as he tried to fill her in on how the event would proceed. 

 

And anyway, she thinks, it’s not like their luck can get any worse.

 

“Don’t be a prick, you know I was out of my mind with boredom,” she says, her voice cracking slightly from disuse. She’s taken to talking to the service droids, but she hasn’t been so desperate for companionship that she’d say more than a few words a day to a non responsive conversation partner. He hums in agreement and turns to the droid currently fixing a stubbornly straight piece of hair next to her face. 

 

“Make her lips darker,” he says, and then he’s turning to leave the room. And Rey wants so badly not to give a damn, but she knows it would be foolish to try to get through this day without any guidance. 

 

“Kylo,” she says weakly, almost plaintively. She knows that such an earnest tone will make him freeze, and it does. He turns his head slightly back toward her, and she sees his jaw clenching.

 

“No, I can’t get you out of it,” he spits. “This is the deal.”

 

Rey feels tears prickling at the corners of her eyes, because she hadn’t even thought to try to bargain with him. Is that bad? Does it mean she’s given up hope? Or is it good that she doesn’t feel the need to grovel? 

 

“I just wanted to ask what’s going to happen,” she says. “I mean—today.”

 

“Ah. Yes. Well.”

 

He walks over to the window of her dressing chamber, staring out into the city. At first glance she thinks he’s wearing his same old clothes, but upon closer inspection she sees subtle changes that make the tight black outfit and sweeping cowl more formal. His shirt is rather intricately crafted from some kind of black leather, tailored perfectly to his form, and there’s a large black jewel fastening his cape. There’s even an onyx circlet of a crown peppered with rubies, though it’s barely peeking out from his glossy hair. 

 

She moves to stand next to him, but stays a few feet behind. “You’re nervous too?” 

 

He sighs so hard Rey wonders if he’s forgotten this is all his doing. 

 

“It’s not exactly going to be a traditional wedding,” he says, fiddling with something in his pocket. “But I hope you realize that my advisors all wanted it to be much, much worse.”

 

He pulls out a long chain, studded with gemstones to match the ones all over her dress and his crown. It looks more like jewelry than something you’d use the tug a slave around, she thinks. But then again, she’s probably the most coveted slave in the galaxy. 

 

“I assume you’re dragging me to the alter on the end of that,” she tilts her head to the chain. She thinks she’ll feel better about this—ever so slightly better—if she acts unfazed. “Anything else I should know about? Is there going to be some kind of macabre reception or—“

 

“—we have to consummate it tonight,” Kylo says in a rush, as if she might not be upset if he gets it out quickly enough. She’s taken aback by his obvious anxiety, but recovers quickly with a jab.

 

“What happened to waiting until I’m begging you for it, Emperor?” Rey’s decided that she’ll only use his title when she really, _really_ wants him to suffer. And maybe antagonizing him is counter-productive, but she’s been left to her own devices for weeks and she’s just found out she’ll be losing her virginity this evening, so she lets herself have this one little thing. 

 

But it’s not as satisfying as she’d hoped. He just looks even more nervous, and he won’t make eye contact.

 

“There were some…influential people…who wanted it to be a…public event,” he says gruffly, putting a fidgety hand on his hip. Strangely, Rey finds herself thinking that he’s never reminded her more of his father than at this exact moment. It’s something in the stance, the brow, the corner of the mouth. A poke into his mind tells her what it is; he cares deeply about how much this day will upset her, but the emotion makes him uncomfortable. Awkwardly trying to reject a deep well of compassion seems to be a singularly Solo trait. 

 

“I see,” Rey blinks, trying not to appear overwhelmed. “So we’re going to…with…people watching?”

 

He rubs his temple and shakes his head. “Holovid. For a few…elite individuals. It was a compromise.”

 

She doesn’t want to give him too much credit, given the whole forced marriage thing, but she has to admit she’s grateful it won’t be a live broadcast. Or worse, an outright assault in the middle of the reception hall. 

 

“Since we’re talking about it, we have some options to discuss.” He taps on the window glass thoughtfully, anxiously. “Because it’s going to have to seem like a rape.”

 

_Don’t worry, it will be._ The thought is out into the air before Rey can stop herself, and then she wonders why she wishes she had. He winces. 

 

“Fair point,” he says, grinding his teeth as he speaks, “but I’m confident you didn’t expect me to use brute force or cruelty on our first night together. You know you’re everything to me, Rey. You have to know that. You can feel it.”

 

She bites her lip and nods. She won’t comfort him; he doesn’t deserve it. But he’s not wrong. He wants her to want him, to be happy with him. He’s going to take his time trying to win her over. Given the option, he’d have used tonight to tease her, to tempt her, hopefully paving the way to something less one-sided a few nights or weeks or years down the road. The trouble is that he’d rather have her miserable in his bed than happy on the other side of the galaxy, so it doesn’t bother him _too much_ that she’d rather die than marry him. He would have given up and taken what he wanted eventually. But no, not so soon. Not tonight. And if she’s really being honest with herself, Rey knows she would have given in before it came to that. Their physical connection is impossible to deny, and boredom is a powerful thing. 

 

Rey sees all the possible outcomes for the evening laid out before her, and she decides she needs to make him her ally. She’s not optimistic about so swaying him that she can change the Empire for the better or convince him to release her, but she knows she can play him well enough to make him feel like they’re coconspirators for the night. She’ll tenderly comfort him through the worst day of her life if it saves her from feeling like a victim in the morning. 

 

“Thank you for negotiating with them,” she says softly, not hiding the fact that it pains her to express gratitude to him. A little truth makes the lie stick, especially when you’re trying to manipulate someone with access to your thoughts. “It can’t have been easy. I’m sure there have been some difficult questions about how best to humiliate me.”

 

He lets out a tense breath and actually _smiles_ at her, and Rey almost pities how desperate he is for her affection. 

 

“Yes,” he says. “It’s been difficult.”

 

He reaches out and takes her hand, and she manages not to flinch or pull away. 

 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says softly. And then he’s kissing her, breathing her in and pressing his fingers hard into the base of her skull to keep her close. _You’re hurting me now,_ she thinks—she can hardly help the little quip—but if he hears, he doesn’t show it. He only releases her when her lips are practically bruising. 

 

“Tell me what to do,” he pleads. It takes everything Rey has not to balk. She’s had three minutes to process what’s going to happen, and the Emperor of the kriffing galaxy expects _her_ to come up with some magical solution? 

 

But no, that’s not it. She knows that’s not it. Kylo is well aware that this is a zero-sum game; he cannot hope to make this bearable for Rey, so he can only grasp for her cooperation. He’s asking her what to do because a solution from her lips will carry her tacit approval. He wants to tell himself that whatever happens tonight, it’s alright because he’s _helping to carry out Rey’s plan_. 

 

She has to let out a slow breath to keep her head. 

 

“Well,” she says, looking off to the side to minimize the temptation to scowl at him, “why don’t we just…”

 

Rey thinks about how good it felt when he made her come. And kriff, she thinks, she wasn’t going to _give in_ , she planned on fighting him until she'd forgotten what it was like to be free, but apparently _something_ is going to happen tonight one way or another, and _what if_ …

 

“It doesn’t need to be violent,” her voice is suddenly steady as the pieces lock into place in her mind. “They’ll love it if you make me beg for it.”

 

Her eyes fall hard on his. 

 

“Kylo,” she says firmly. “Make me beg for it.”

 

He opens and shuts his mouth in shock, a gesture she’d enjoy to no end on any other day. 

 

“Just…do what you did last time,” she feels a little awkward, less resolute now that she sees his surprise and confusion. Wielding the power she has over him is still uncomfortable for her. It comes in spurts and starts, and when it passes she's left feeling like she just came much too close to the Dark. But she knows she has to push forward with this. She knows it's the right thing to do. “Seduce me. Mercilessly. Make it feel good for me, no matter how much I tell you to stop.”

 

She grips his hands tight in her own until he nods. 

 

“You think they’ll accept that?” His voice cracks the slightest bit. “They want me to break you. To humiliate you.”

 

And oh, part of her really _does_ pity him for being so deluded, for not realizing that he was _breaking her and humiliating her_ when he forced her to fall apart under his hands. There are days and nights when she thinks he would eventually be able to make her love him, but sometimes he reminds her he’s more a scared little boy than a seductive mastermind. He wants, he takes, he wants some more. There’s no grand scheme to it. 

 

“Trust me.” Rey pulls away as gently as she can muster, turning to place her hands on the windowpane. There's a quiet rage bubbling up in her, at the knowledge that this foolish, powerful manchild who's all desperate want and endless misery is the one in control of her fate. Her knuckles turn white as she gazes out on the city. “Just trust me.”

 

She loses time, tuning him out to keep her cool. When she breaks from the sudden meditation, Kylo is long gone. Her eyes refocus on the glass before her, taking in her own disheveled image instead of the city bustling beneath. She examines herself critically. Tonight is the big reveal of a character she’ll be playing for a long time. 

 

“You heard the Emperor,” she says, crooking a finger at the droids without looking away from her translucent reflection. “Make the lips darker.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, wonderful readers. Work has been a beast and I've been dealing with some family illnesses. All is well and I hope to get another chapter out very shortly. Your feedback means so much, so please keep it coming. <3

He wraps the jeweled chain around her wrist once, twice, three times, looping it through to make something of a knot. The bindings do not truly confine her; Rey can feel that she could squirm her hands free with just a bit of effort. Is that really better, she wonders idly as he leads her down the aisle, than if the chains had truly locked her wrists in place? She knows he thinks so. 

 

There’s just one undignified tug for show, right as they approach the alter where they’ll say there vows. Rey stumbles. She sees Kylo almost lunge to catch her. Their eyes lock and each of them plays the part they need to play—he lets her fall, and she crashes down to her knees. 

 

Rey wants to roll her eyes at the ceremony, full of proclamations about the life of subservience she’ll lead in utter devotion to the noble and all-powerful Emperor. It’s mostly Kylo’s show, and she tunes the whole thing out until he _kicks her_. It’s a soft, harmless kick, but she looks up at him in genuine shock. 

 

“Your turn, little Jedi,” he says lowly. She imagines his followers think he’s sneering, but she can tell he’s sad. Maker, she wishes she couldn’t tell he was sad. 

 

“I…”

 

She clears her throat, wondering what she’s meant to say. She hasn’t been paying close attention, and none of the handful of weddings she’s attended have had much in common with one another, let alone with this horrific display. There were a couple ramshackle affairs on Jakku, but that wasn’t a planet with much respect for ceremony. The three Rebel marriages she saw were mosaics of the respective cultures of the two participants—plus random sprinklings of wartime sentiment and minus whatever couldn’t be done on a base without surplus supplies. The only thing she _knows_ a wedding is meant to have is plenty of alcohol. 

 

After a moment of blind panic, she improvises. Her eyes narrow, and she hisses out a _no_. She’s not surprised by the sting of his hand when he slaps her across the face—that was rather the point—but she’s taken aback by the force of it. It occurs to her that he might actually be angry. Is his pride really so delicate when it comes to her that he can’t even remember they’re meant to pretend to be at war?

 

His hand grips under her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. 

 

“I pledge myself to Emperor Kylo Ren,” he growls, “for as long as I live.”

 

Could be worse, she thinks, and she repeats the words hollowly. 

 

He shoves her away, letting her fall face-first onto the floor, and she catches a glimpse of the officers making up the front row. They’re all leering. Hux—Rey almost laughs out loud in shock to realize he’s still alive, given what she’s seen about him in Kylo’s thoughts—is practically licking his lips. She wonders idly how much of Ren’s insistence on protecting her was due to his indignation at having to share her body with this one particular man. Too much, she’s sure. 

 

“Well then, Emperor Ren,” the redheaded man sneers, “shall we bring her to the reception for you? Surely your highness needn’t exert himself dragging such a temperamental prisoner across the palace.”

 

Her whole body freezes as she feels him consider it. 

 

“Quite right, Hux,” he says softly. “See to it that you don’t damage my new wife in transit.”

 

And then she’s in the air, hoisted over the General’s shoulder with the help of one of his men. She can’t even tell whose hands are on her ass. They’re halfway across the room when her wrists snap back so hard she’s momentarily worried she’s broken something; none of the half-a-dozen men pretending to help carry her have bothered collecting the chain wrapped around her wrists, and it’s caught on something. She feels a spike of anxiety from Kylo at her involuntary gasp of pain, but he merely kicks the chain off the snag and turns away as her eyes grow wide and pleading. 

 

“He’s a lucky bastard, our Emperor,” murmurs one of the men groping her legs under the guise of keeping her from kicking. “Do you think he’ll ever share?”

 

Hux scoffs. 

 

“Oh, please,” his nasal ton reeks of undue superiority. “Our little brat of a ruler? He’ll tire of her in a month, I’m sure.”

 

He punctuates the sentiment with a sharp slap of her ass, and Rey can’t help but grunt. He digs his fingers in hard enough to bruise, then lets one finger slide between her legs. He’s not touching her skin, which is something to be thankful for, but the lace of her dress and the silk of her panties do little to keep him from pushing inside her. 

 

“Anyway,” he says, his voice lowering with arousal, “I’m sure the little Jedi whore will be begging for other company soon enough. Who knows what favors we can all look forward to as she pleads with us to release her, hmm?”

 

Rey grits her teeth. She wants to kill them all, but she was never strong enough to take on a whole army. And after her weeks of seclusion, she’s not sure she’s even strong enough to take on the six of them. 

 

When they finally reach their destination—a great hall, decked in black jewels and red silks for the occasion—she’s dropped roughly onto the marble floor next to Kylo’s throne. He immediately reaches down to stroke her hair. 

 

“Don’t let them do that again,” she says softly, only once she’s sure no one is close enough to hear. The hall is full of laughter and conversation and music, and no one dares stand anywhere near their mercurial ruler and his conquest. “Please, Kylo. Don’t let them—“

 

He presses a finger to her lips. 

 

“I promise that the indignities of tonight will be the worst I will ever knowingly suffer you,” he murmurs. And she nods, forcing herself to forgive him for the moment. They have to be a team for this. She has to make him believe that. She has to indulge this fantasy he has, this idea that he’s adequately protecting her. Whether she kills him or breaks him, one day she will have her revenge. One day she will save the galaxy from this brutal empire. She will believe this every moment of her life, or she will find some way to end it. 

“Thank you, Kylo,” she whispers. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just some wedding night jitters, in a manner of speaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I, uh, literally put off finishing a book proposal that's already overdue to finish this. I can't help it, y'all are so sweet! But please forgive any sloppiness, because instead of giving it a close copy edit I had to go write the stuff I'm getting paid for. xoxoxoxo

Her hands are still bound, but her husband tips great gulps of sweet red wine into her mouth almost faster than she can swallow. Rey knows better than to refuse, because she can see what it is he’s offering her. Drunkenness will bring her numbness, oblivion. Or it would, if she could actually manage to get drunk. 

 

Rey doesn’t have enough experience with endless quantities of alcohol to know whether she usually holds it so well, but she assumes her stubborn persistence of clear-headedness has something to do with the adrenaline thrumming through her veins. 

 

The third time he makes her tilt her head back to drain an ornate goblet in one go, she almost starts to feel as if she isn’t really there. But she’s halfway through the fourth goblet when she hears Hux’s laugh ring out from the other side of the room, and it makes her choke. Kyle tugs her up to him by her jaw, setting her down in his lap so he can tongue the spilled wine off of her neck. 

 

“Relax, my beautiful bride,” he murmurs, his voice sticky and sweet with the same wine he’s been coaxing down her throat. “I’m the only monster who’ll be touching you tonight.”

 

Rey opens her mouth with a scathing retort or two in mind, but her breath hitches and slides into a little whimper when his hand brushes down the length of her spine. She idly wonders if she should be fighting him, but decides the room has watched her guzzle enough alcohol that sitting there limp is probably sufficient. She can feel Kylo getting hard beneath her thighs, and his hands wander and wander and wander until she starts to melt into him. She tries, briefly, to pull away and get back to the floor, but he tugs on her gilded chain and wraps it around his hand until there’s no slack, forcing her hands up against his chest and keeping her body firmly in place on his lap. 

 

“Fight me,” he murmurs, and she squirms and scrambles. It’s only when he growls and stands up, holding her against him with her feet dangling off the floor, that it occurs to her he might not have been asking her to put on a show for the crowd. 

 

He just wanted to feel her struggle and force her into submission. 

 

“No,” she murmurs, kicking her feet at him as he walks her down the center of the room. “No, no, no Kylo, don’t, not yet—“

 

He silences her with a brutal kiss, slamming her body up against the wall. It feels like the entire room is holding its breath, and then Kylo reaches out a hand to fling the massive doors open. 

 

“Oh no, Emperor Ren, leaving your guests so soon?” Rey can’t see Hux—can’t see anything at all, because Kylo has yet to pause his assault on her mouth—but she thinks he’s somewhere off to the left, by the sumptuous buffet no one has bothered to feed her from. “I’m sure none of us would mind if you started the evening’s…festivities right here,” he says.

  
Rey cringes so hard it makes her face twist beneath Kylo’s insistent lips, and he finally pulls away to glare at the leering redhead. 

 

“Again, General, I’m touched that your admiration for your Emperor extends to a desire to watch him fuck his new bride,” he says derisively. “But I’m sure you can…satisfy yourself,” he pauses to smirk, “with the holo-vid.” 

 

He carries her through the door, then, slamming it behind them and hoisting her up so she’s cradled in his arms, and she wishes she’d had time to drink more wine. Why does she have to be so clear-headed for this? She’s already told him what to do, how to sufficiently shame her without destroying her. She trusts him to stick to their plan. So why the hell does she have to be conscious for it? She makes the mistake of looking at him once. His eyes are locked on her face, enraptured, and it’s too much to bear. She rests her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes. 

 

It takes nearly ten minutes to walk from the grand banquet hall to his chambers, even with his long strides. Rey tries to meditate, dissociate, anything but allow her panic to rise steadily with each step that rings out through the opulent stone halls. It doesn’t help that the path from the reception to his bedroom is not just empty, but _conspicuously_ so; If she strains, she can hear the scurrying steps of servants and guards fleeing in all directions upon sensing their master’s approach. She’s not sure how she’d feel if she could make eye contact with these strangers or hear their whispers, but their fear makes the whole affair feel that much more ominous. 

 

“I’m going to start the recording right away, so be ready,” he murmurs into her hair as they finally turn a corner, approaching his suite of private rooms. The doors are all open for his inspection—it’s his first day in the palace too, she suddenly realizes—and she lifts her head to look at her new prison. Guards have already stepped in to stand at the end of the hallway, seemingly from nowhere, and she wagers that this offshoot from the main hall will be where she’s confined. Assuming, of course, her lord and master is generous. She’s sure his advisors expect her to be kept in their bedroom, if not chained to some piece of furniture within it. And of course, as he's explained to her, she won't be staying in one place. There's this palace, in the city, but he has others. He'll keep her wherever is most convenient. They pass a library and a training room and a solarium bursting with flowering plants before reaching the end of the line, and Kylo exhales slowly as he carries her over the threshold. 

 

Rey is somewhat surprised to feel herself trembling as he punches an order into the control panel by the door. She reminds herself, again, that this horrific man loves her so much it’s liable to grind his bones down to dust. He will not hurt her more than he feels he has to. And if he does, well, she’ll survive it. Or she won’t. There’s not much point in being frightened, she thinks. She imagines submerging herself in ice-cold water, willing the chill to seep down through her skin and spread over the very synapses of her brain so she might emerge unfeeling and resolute. 

 

She hasn’t quite managed it by the time Kylo removes her chain and throws her down onto the bed. 

 

“You’re all mine now, little Jedi,” he murmurs, eyes almost black. She hasn’t had time to take in the bedroom, but she can tell it’s huge, and dark, and cold. There are furs spread over the bed, covering silky sheets, and a massive fireplace is roaring somewhere far away. It's Rey's first time on the planet and she's never been outside, but she has a feeling the chill doesn't come from the outside climate. There's so much death and darkness here. The flames cast a shadowy glow around Kylo’s face as he climbs over her. 

 

Rey scrambles up the bed, wincing when he grabs her by the hair and drags her back down beneath him. He tears through the delicate lace of her dress and the flimsy silk of her underwear. His hands are hot on her thighs, his breath even hotter, and his mouth almost burns when he sets out to devour her. She gasps and fights back, relishing the moment. There will be so many nights when she will not be able to fight him. There will be so many nights when she will be broken, or scared of retribution, or heavy and fragile with child. She claws and kicks at him even as she feels herself getting close, because every blow she lands feels like a victory she can save for later. There will be so many nights between them, she thinks, but on their _first_ she fought like a demon. 

 

He stops as soon as she starts to clamp her thighs around his head, and he forces her legs back down. “So impatient,” he coos. “After all that fuss, you’re so desperate to come for me, aren’t you?”

 

Kylo crawls up her body, smirking. His fingers find her dripping folds, pushing inside as their eyes lock together. She arches her spine, trying to get the pressure where she needs it, but then shrinks back. It fits the script, but in truth her sudden horror is genuine; she didn’t want to want this, at least not so badly. 

 

“Please don’t,” she murmurs. “I can’t do this. Not with you.”

 

She realizes her mistake instantly, sees the pain and anger flash in his eyes. She’s prodded somewhere sensitive, and he drives his fingers into her so forcefully she cries out in pain more than pleasure. 

 

“ _Only_ with me,” he growls. “No one else could make you fall apart like this, scavenger. And no other man will ever touch you, anyway. This is _mine. You_ are mine. I’m going to fuck you until you can’t even drag yourself out of this bed. Do you understand?”

 

She knows her expression is one of pure panic, and she tries to reach out to him with the Force. It’s too much. He’s not in control. Mentally, she begs him to calm down. Physically, she’s losing herself—the brutal assault of his fingers isn’t pleasant, but it’s driving her sensitive body to the brink. 

 

“Be a good girl and come for me,” he says lowly, “and then maybe I’ll be a little nicer to you.”

 

Rey wonders if that was for her or for the holo-vid, but it doesn’t matter. She cries out, her whole body tightening in white-hot pleasure, and in her next breath she’s sobbing. Kylo hums appreciatively and kisses her tears. 

 

“You’re so kriffing pretty when you cry, Rey,” he says lowly. She feels him get up off the bed and hears his clothing come off; buckles unbuckled and boots kicked away. He grabs her hand and drags it to his cock, trying to coax her into stroking him, but she pulls back and wipes her tears away instead. He tsks. 

 

“So defiant, my exquisite Empress is,” his voice is mocking now, and he grabs her by the hair. “I bet I can make you beg for it, hm?”

 

Something inside her is calmed, every so slightly, by the reminder of their original plan. She exhales slowly and opens her eyes, taking him in for the first time. She hasn’t really seen him undressed before, and even in her anxiousness and fury Rey feels herself responding to the sight. He’s toned, so much larger than she, and his cock is thick and weeping with arousal—for her. It’s a heady feeling, and she flushes. His smirk deepens. 

 

“So innocent,” he says, wrapping a hand around his member to give it a lazy stroke as he casts his eyes up and down her body. “You’re actually _blushing_.”

 

“I am _not_ ,” Rey says, her voice just barely trembling. 

 

“Oh yes, you are,” Kylo edges closer to her. “It’s alright, my sweet little bride, you can touch it.”

 

Rey nearly rolls her eyes, but she realizes this is her opportunity to take back some semblance of control. She fixes her face in an expression she hopes reads as scared but defiant, and she lets her hand tremble as it reaches out to wrap around his cock. She looks into his eyes when she finally touches him, just to capture the moment of pure rapture and devotion he betrays before closing them. 

 

“It’s…” Rey struggles to think of something to say, something an idiot Imperial General will find believable as evidence of her humiliating surrender. She decides it’s probably safe to go with the stupidly obvious. “It’s too big. Please don’t make me, Kylo.”

 

She takes a deep breath, diving into the performance. 

 

“I can…I’ll…I mean…I’ll do whatever you want me to, but I can’t…”

 

She can tell from the way his eyelids flutter that his eyes are practically rolling back into his head. The fact that he’s _enjoying_ her pathetic simpering makes her have to fight back a scowl. But he opens his eyes and pushes her hand away before her anger can derail the plan, and then something flashes in the air behind him, lit by the flames of that ridiculous fire. The chain is around her wrists again before she even recognizes it. He shushes her faint protests as he winds the metal tight around the frame of the bed. 

 

“Enjoy this,” he says, and it’s more of a command than a request. 

  
The next hour or so is a complete blur. He’s teasing her, toying with her, using his tongue and fingers and teeth to bring her to the edge over and over again without release. She can feel his own anguish pressed hot and hard against her thigh, but he seems to ignore it aside from the occasional thrust into her sweat-slicked skin. By the fifth time he denies her, Rey is crying out and begging without reserve. By the tenth, she’s forgotten to even be angry or embarrassed about it. She doesn’t understand how he keeps her teetering like this—she was shocked when she didn't just spill over the edge into an orgasm right at the start—but somehow he knows exactly what to do, and how much, and when to stop. 

 

“I’m not going to let you come until I’m inside you,” he says when she’s turned barely coherent in her pleading, “and I’m not going to fuck you until you beg for it. Are you still sure you couldn’t possibly take my cock, Rebel scum?”

 

Rey whimpers, not so far gone as to miss how humiliating this moment is. But she feels like all that’s left of her is _need_.

 

“Please,” she whispers. 

 

“Please what?” Kylo kisses his way up her body, eliciting a gasp of pained ecstasy when he brushes his lips over each of her nipples in turn. He’s nibbling at her neck and lazily fingering her when she finally brings herself to speak. 

 

“Please fuck me,” she murmurs. 

 

She’s shocked when he thrusts inside her, the words barely having left her lips. She’d expected him to draw it out more, make her say it again and again. But when he chokes out a groan as he settles inside her, she realizes how desperate he is to find his own pleasure. 

 

In the surprise of it all, she doesn’t register any pain. Then again, she’s so raw and aching with want that she probably wouldn’t have noticed much of anything. She feels how big he is, especially within her—she’s too small for him, and a virgin besides—but it just feels _good_. He’s hitting all the spots his fingers sought out at once, and he’s hot and hard and _twitching_ and _kriff_ , she wants him to move. 

 

“Please,” she whines, shifting her hips. “I’m so close.”

 

He either has perfect control or none at all, because the pace he sets is absolutely brutal and exactly what she needs. She can’t stop herself from coming almost immediately, and she doesn’t try to. Kylo responds with a shocked, guttural moan and follows her, his cock throbbing inside her as he fills her with his release. She’s not sure if it’s the longest orgasm she’s ever had, or if the warm spurt of his seed has actually triggered a second one. But she’s still dazed when he slips out of her with a shiver and reaches over to a tablet to stop the recording. 

 

“Would you like to take a bath?”

 

Rey blinks and sits up. She considers it, considers him; he looks scared and sad and—is he _trembling_?

 

“What’s wrong, Kylo?” she doesn’t hide her annoyance. “That went exactly the way you wanted it to.”

 

“Yes, I suppose it did,” he presses his lips together. “Well, suit yourself. I’m taking a bath.”

 

Rey sighs. She’s not ready to face herself in the mirror, or to face him in so intimate a setting. She’s not ready to face any of it. She reaches to take the pins out of her elaborate hair, and realizes her wrists are still chained. How could she forget? Is that the kind of thing one gets used to in the span of a few hours?

 

She almost calls for Kylo to come back and release her, but after a moment of concentration she finds the strength to break the bejeweled knot of metal herself. She falls back into bed, her hair forgotten, and curls up into a tight ball burrowed under the silks and furs. She begs her body to fall asleep before her husband returns. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Kylo settle into married life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this once-a-week thing is probable more of a bi-monthly thing. But your comments make it all come quicker, I swear ;-) Please keep sharing the love.

Her husband doesn’t try to bed her again before he returns to the skies; he barely even looks at her. Rey is—well, she’s not _glad_ , exactly, because he’s made himself her only shot at a half-decent conversation, but part of her is relieved. She keeps returning to that moment on their wedding night, when he’d stood sad and trembling before her instead of basking in the afterglow of his long-sought conquest. She keeps thinking about how much he hated himself for the circumstances of their first coupling. 

 

She feels sorry for him, and she knows it would have come out as kindness had he stayed by her side much longer. Rey wouldn’t hesitate to end Kylo if she had the chance (or at least she promises herself she wouldn’t) but she can’t deny that she has the strangest urge to comfort him when he shows his weaknesses.

 

He’s there on the day after the wedding, but barely. Rey sees him when she wakes—he’s tightening the laces of his boots when she first peeks blearily out of a pile of sheets, and hurries out the door before she surfaces again—and just before bed, when he enters, strips, and lays down silent and still at her side. 

 

In the meantime she settles into her new home, her prison, or at least the first of them. The little hallway of rooms is hers to wander as she pleases, and there are books to read and flowers to smell and even a pool she can float or tread in. She spends most of her first day as Empress submerged in water, testing how long the Force and her own will can keep her conscious without air. It’s luxurious beyond belief to have sweet, crystal clear liquid covering every bit of her skin, and she finds herself thinking how decadent it would be, after a life scavenging for scraps in a parched and barren desert, to die by drowning. 

 

She feels more like royalty when she emerges from that pool, water splashing down her curves and accumulating wasted on the floor, than she did lying in their bed stacked with soft fabrics and exotic furs. The decor of their rooms feels wrong, artificial, lavish in a way she might have seen described in some old children’s book. Rey muses on this as she piles her damp hair onto her head and slips on a simple gray dress. Maybe Kylo doesn’t know how to be a ruler. Maybe storybooks are all he has to go on. 

 

He clearly doesn’t know how to be a husband, either, because when Rey murmurs a thank you for access to the pool on that second night he just grits his teeth and closes his eyes. And in the morning, he’s gone. A medical droid wakes her up with binary greeting, and Rey stretches and groans and asks him to repeat himself. 

 

“A… a contraceptive shot?” She asks softly. Rey’s eyes dart to the door. She’s sure it must be a mistake, and she knows there will be fire and fury if Kylo finds out. But who could have ordered such a thing, even by accident? She’s horribly curious, but the mystery of it all doesn’t stop her from holding out her arm and accepting the quick sting. Having Kylo’s children is inevitable, but she will _not_ pass up a chance to put it off just a little longer. 

 

——————————————

 

He leaves her alone for a month.

 

A _month._

 

He’s gone for so long that she’s won the whole staff over by the day of his return; the guards have all fallen half in love with her and the human attendants are ready to jump in front of blasters to save her from pain. The droids, well, she's the first human they've ever met who bothers to understand binary, so she's basically become a legend.

It’s not as if Rey tried consciously to sow seeds of discord among the help—though that would have been an excellent plan, and one she _should_ have come up with, she muses—but Kylo’s empire is so full of raging assholes that she seems rather magnanimous by comparison. She has to fight an amused snort when one of the Stormtroopers posted in front of her room whispers that she should yell if she needs help. What kind of help could this faceless soldier give her against his all-powerful master? But orchestrating a new wave of the rebellion from inside Kylo’s home is an interesting thought, and she tucks it away for future meditation. Now isn’t the time to muse on the possibility of overthrowing her husband; he’s finally home. She pauses in the doorway for a moment, expecting him to turn to face her. But he keeps gazing out the window. 

 

“You know,” she says tersely, “I figured the man who tore the galaxy apart to make me his bride would pay a little more attention to me.”

 

His lip turns up in a smirk as he angles his head toward her. 

 

“So you missed me, little Jedi?”

 

Rey scoffs, but says nothing. He understands. His smile falls again, and his eyes flicker back to the horizon. 

 

“I thought you’d prefer having me far away,” he murmurs. “But I realize my mistake. I could feel how lonely you were as soon as we entered the sector.”

 

_You felt me?_

 

He looks almost hurt at her surprise, and Rey feels that damnable need to comfort him bubbling out of her again. 

 

“It’s not that I don't—I mean, I feel you too,” she says, her face growing hot. “But only when I really try to. Or when I’m looking at you. Otherwise it’s just a…a hum. White noise in the background. I notice it when you really force me out, but it’s not like I know what you’re thinking when I don’t yank it out of you. It’s not like it was with Snoke.”

 

When she’d been kept up at night by the sensation of his longing from light-years away, when she had looked into his eyes and seen the future he'd dreamed up with her. Wide-eyed, dark-haired children on their laps and star systems full of supplicants at their feet. 

 

“The bond never got any weaker,” he says. “You just got better at tuning it out.”

 

He takes a deep pull from a bottle she hadn’t noticed in his right hand. His anguish is like a hot cloud around him, and she wades into it cautiously. Kylo offers her the bottle before she asks, and she takes a swig without further investigation. It’s a spirit she’s pretty sure she had on a Rebel mission once, though of course she knows this bottle must cost more than the ship she’d been flying on. He doesn’t speak again until they’ve passed the drink back and forth half a dozen times. 

 

“I hope the shot didn’t make you feel ill,” he says softly. “I’ve heard it can do that.”

 

Her heart feels like it’s shattering and melting all at once. The contraceptive had come at _Kylo's own command._ He’s going to let her control this, he’s going to give her a veto, and she won’t have to feel her body stretch and grow around a life that’s half his until she’s ready. Tears prickle at the corner of her eyes. It shouldn't be such an impressive gesture, but it  _is_. 

 

“No, it was fine,” she whispers, taking another swig of liquor to keep herself from babbling. She licks her lips. She wants to reward him for this flicker of humanity, and there’s something else, too—the nagging sense that she really does love this monster. It's so hard not to remember that she loves him when he acts half tolerable. So she puts the bottle down on the floor and stands on her toes to kiss him. Kylo is still as a stone beneath her lips until he is suddenly burning her alive, wrapping his whole body around hers and tumbling them into bed. 

 

She doesn’t mind that he tears her leggings and tunic right off of her, or that his fingers tangle too hard in her still-damp hair. She doesn’t want him to worship her. His supplication is too full of self-loathing, and it makes her think and do things she shouldn’t. The raw passion is better; she can pretend it’s only lust. 

 

He’s just slipped his fingers inside her—and elicited a tiny shriek—when he groans and drops his head down to kiss her throat.

 

“The guard outside,” he murmurs ( _growls_ , really). “He heard you. He’s thinking about you. He’s imagining me holding you down and fucking you and he wants to stop picturing it but he can’t.”

 

Kylo is inside her before she even realizes he’s pulled down his pants, and she keens. She drags her nails down his back until he sets a frantic rhythm, but she doesn’t tell him to stop murmuring about their conflicted voyeur. Rey isn’t sure she likes it for its own sake, exactly, but she can feel Kylo’s cock swelling and twitching as he details the other man’s jealous arousal, and she’s too drunk in every sense of the word to begrudge him the power trip. 

 

And maybe a small part of her feels a thrill at the notion that she is a glorious prize to be chased and won and eternally gloated over. Is that so terrible? 

 

He makes her scream when she comes, and her face burns red hot as he fucks her through it. He tells her he loves her, and she doesn’t tell him she hates him. It all feels vaguely horrible and horribly _right_. When he finally loses control buried deep in her quivering cunt, he says it again and again and again and she still can’t bring herself to feel disgusted at his obsessive affections. She even lets him roll her onto her side and curl up around her without any protest, and when his hand snakes between her legs to coax another orgasm out of her, she’s surprised to find how hungry she is for it. 

 

“You’re being awfully considerate,” she says with a yawn, arguably snuggling even deeper into his embrace. He hums noncommittally. 

 

“You deserve it,” he murmurs. He kisses the shell of her ear. “My sweet, lonely Empress. You deserve so much more.”

 

His hand comes to stroke her belly thoughtfully, and she fights to stay awake. 

 

“How long does the shot work for?” 

 

His hand freezes. 

 

Her eyes fly open. 

 

They both stay completely silent and still for a long moment, each afraid the other will snap. Rey takes a deep, shaky breath and reminds herself that her body might as well be occupied territory. She must not fall out of his favor. She must learn to control him. She can survive anything. 

 

But that doesn’t mean she has to pretend to love every moment of it. 

 

“The shot was just to keep me from getting pregnant that week, wasn’t it,” she says. Her own voice sounds alien and flat to her ears. “You just didn’t want it—you didn’t want a baby to come out of…of that night.”

 

He swallows hard, and his voice is delicate when he speaks. 

 

“You thought it was for…longer?”

  
She nods. She can practically hear the wheels turning in his head. He’s asking himself if he can stomach giving her this concession. Rey already knows he can’t; there’s a reason why, when she thought he’d made such a sacrifice in pursuit of her happiness and trust, she’d instantly wanted to throw herself at him and express whatever broken kind of love she holds for him.

 

“I promise I’ll take care of you,” he murmurs. He wraps his arms tighter as if afraid she’ll squirm away, but she doesn’t. She just takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. 

 

"I know that much, Kylo," she whispers. "I do."

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first year isn't so bad, all things considered. 
> 
> Kylo arrives to take Rey on a little trip, and she makes him regret it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I'm garbage. But I'm so honored there are still folks interested in this story. I will do my best to keep updating monthly or bimonthly. Please keep the reviews coming, they make me smile.

Their first year isn’t so bad, all things considered. 

 

Kylo is gone for most of it—he visits often, yes, but only for a day or two at a time—and she almost starts to turn her loyal servants into actual friends. She gets back into shape in the training room and her skin and hair take on a glow thanks to the endless abundance of food and water, and she knows that physically, at least, she’s never been in better health. And for a few months, her dreams flicker with memories of the Jedi that are not her own. The girl who does her hair is the one who lets slip that Ren’s palace sits on the site of the old temple. No one dares tell Rey more, but the knowledge helps her almost connect to something. The power in the walls around her hovers just out of reach, a secret on the tip of her tongue. She starts to think that maybe, if she meditates deeply enough, Luke will appear to her. But with no one to show her the way, she cannot quite bridge the gap to her former teacher. She contents herself with finding comfort in the spirit of the place. 

 

Blessedly, there are no babies. 

 

She assumes, based on the now-slightly-more-than-cursory understanding she has of pregnancy thanks to her days spent reading, that Kylo’s random and brief visits have simply failed to line up with her cycle. She does miss him a little; he’s mostly quite kind to her when they spend time together, always fussing over her and professing his love and unworthiness. There have been a few angry outbursts or thunderclouds of magnificent depression, but he’s generally good enough company to make her days of solitude seem morose in comparison. As such, she meditates often to keep her mood level and inscrutable, lest he sense her aching loneliness and spend a long stretch at home. 

 

Rey is sure Kylo knows as much or more about the anatomical limitations of conception as she does, but some combination of pride and obtuseness makes him increasingly indignant that his seed has not taken hold. He doesn’t mention it to her—too considerate of her potential shame at the failure, or perhaps too concerned that the stress of such a discussion would hurt their chances even more—but she’s seen him scanning her medical reports with increasing angst. 

 

So she is disappointed but not surprised when he suddenly whisks her away on his ship with no explanation, not even enough warning to say goodbye to her sweet servants and brave little soldiers. Rey tries not to mind. She watches the city flicker out of sight as they enter hyperspace and reminds herself she’s missed the stars. She can thrive in any soil; she’ll take root and rebuild the not-quite-life she’d made for herself on Coruscant somewhere else. 

 

Her husband comes to stand behind her, his hands landing heavy on her shoulders. He rubs little circles on her bare skin with his thumbs—she’s in some ridiculous gown that barely holds itself up over the curve of her bosom, one of the ones he’d picked for her when she first arrived—and then squeezes just the tiniest bit too tight.

 

“Someone down there you’ll miss?” he asks, not quite teasing. There’s an edge of danger there. But then again, there always is. She’d be a fool to think otherwise. 

 

“Who, that poor stormtrooper you’ve spent our entire marriage tormenting? I think you’ll miss him more than I will,” she scoffs. Kylo hasn’t yet tired of feeding his jealous streak by toying with her devoted entourage, and Rey knows better than to so much as smile at any of the men anymore. It might make him harden into her lower back to think of her as the object of every man’s desire at this moment, but she knows he could turn on a pin and have the entire city killed off for looking at her. 

 

“I did love making you scream for him,” Kylo murmurs, his nose brushing her ear as he takes a deep whiff of her hair. Rey leans back into him slightly, sighing. 

 

“Where are we going?”

 

She feels him smirk.

 

“That’s a surprise, little Jedi.”

 

She wants to scream at him that she wants _no part_ in any surprises he could come up with, but she just nods tersely. A romantic getaway, it seems. She hopes he’ll take her somewhere with water. 

 

The slow unbuttoning of her gown is his only show of seduction for the evening, and his hands are shaking by the time he loosens the garment enough to slide it down the swell of her ass. 

 

“Rey,” he groans, tonguing her neck. “I love you.”

 

She says nothing—she still hasn’t given him this—but she guides his hand to where she wants it instead of pretending otherwise. He parts her folds with practiced ease and brings her to the brink nearly as quickly, murmuring words of praise and admiration punctuated by declarations of his love. It’s only once he’s thrust inside her quivering cunt that her silence begins to anger him. It’s throbbing through the bond in time with his harsh thrusts.

 

_say it say it say it say it say it_

 

Rey’s only sound is a gasp as he tangles his fingers in her hair and wrenches her head up to make her look out the window.

 

“We’re not far from where I caught you, _wife_ ,” he growls. “Where I captured you and killed the band of traitors you’d chosen over me. After I _offered you the galaxy._ ”

 

She bites through her lip trying not to come again, and she hates him. But his agony is slicing into her head and seeping into her heart. She takes a hand off the fogging glass of the window and places it over the one digging into her right hip. 

 

“Kylo,” she gasps. “Stop.”

  
She squeezes hard, forcing his fingers to lace with hers. There’s a stutter to the pace of his hips, and then he obeys. Rey exhales slowly and pushes him back, giving herself room to ease off of him and turn around to look him in the eye. He’s confused, and a bit scared, and ready to snap and keep trying to hurt her. 

 

“You don’t need to _do_ that,” she whispers. “Why would you do that to me?”

 

Rey is every bit the benevolent, forgiving goddess as she reaches up to cup his cheek in her hand. But she knows her sweet mercy is the cruelest trick she could play on him. She almost can’t bring herself to do it, knowing he’ll spiral into that pool of self loathing that always threatens to be the end of him. 

 

He’s not even breathing as she pulls him down for a kiss, wrapping her legs around his hips so he can prop her against the window and push back inside her tight heat. He fucks her slowly, then, clinging to her so tightly his nails break skin. “I just want you to love me, Rey,” he whispers. His voice breaks. “I need so badly for you to love me.”

 

Rey couldn’t feel more manipulative, more powerful, more entwined with the Dark than if she were plunging a knife into her lover’s back. 

 

“I do, Ben,” she murmurs. “I do love you.”

 

He barely manages to come inside her before he sinks to the floor. He cries in a heap, Rey cooing and stroking his hair and stealing a secret smirk. It slides away just as quickly, but she doesn’t let her inner conflict spill over into regret. He’s caused her so much pain. She’ll let herself have her little moments of revenge. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s as if the delicate thing she’s felt rattling around inside Kylo’s skull breaks loose when she falls pregnant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I moved! Work has been crazy! I go on vacation in two weeks! I have a very patient book agent who is pretending he’s not horrified by how late my proposal is! And yet: I just found myself really wanting to give y’all another chapter. Thanks for your comments and kudos, they’re lovely. This story is NOT abandoned, it’s just gonna be a bit of a slow burn. Positive feedback is more likely to guilt me into an update than comments asking if I’ve given up on the project, so keep the good stuff coming. <3
> 
> No smut in this one, but I promise we’re not done with all that.

It’s as if the delicate thing she’s felt rattling around inside Kylo’s skull breaks loose when she falls pregnant. 

 

It doesn’t happen quite the way she expected it to. Rey doesn’t feel a spark of life, a change in the Force, a new presence—not immediately. But when it starts to ease into her body and heart, this knowledge that something is growing inside her womb, she knows without a mote of doubt that the child was conceived on the day she made him weep. 

 

Rey knows that their firstborn’s life began not long after she told its father she loved him, likely while she was still glowing with a pitch black satisfaction in her ability to utterly devastate him. This, too, feels like something she should blame Kylo for. Rey recalls a fellow scavenger orphan on Jakku with crossed eyes and a heavy brow fixed in a permanent, warped scowl. An old crone with a stall near Plutt’s had told the boy on more than one occasion that his parents must have been thinking cruel, wicked thoughts when they’d made him. Even then Rey had thought this nonsense, but the memory surfaces in terrible dreams of an infant born with a face like a hard, dark mask and a cry as low as its father’s. 

 

But it’s hard to focus her worries on the growing swell of her belly when her husband seems to have come undone. 

 

His highs are higher, spent worshipping her with his body and his words, buying her luxuries she’s never once thought to dream of. There are endless balms for her to bathe in to sooth her aching joints, soften her fragile skin. Every meal becomes a seemingly endless feast of her favorite foods. The closets bulge with soft, sweet things he longs for her to lay around her rooms in, even as she continues to dress in her leggings and tunics whenever he allows it (and oh, he wants to allow her anything, she’s gotten away with ignoring the lavish gowns for weeks). He clasps heaps of jewels to her neck and wrists as she sleeps, leaving her to scratch and choke herself with the misguided surprises as she tosses in the wake of early morning nightmares. He can’t leave her alone long enough to settle her on her own in a palace, and he can’t be away from his fleet long enough to settle _with_ her, so he shuttles her from one lavish home to another, her head spinning with the changes in culture and climate. She doesn’t think it’s very good for the baby, but then again, she doesn’t think anything about this is very good at all. And he does at least make sure she’s always comfortable, and she must have more frequent check-ups than any patient in the galaxy. 

 

But his lows—oh, the lows—they become so much worse. He longs to touch her in ways he’s now to fearful to allow, and he lives in terror of some harm befalling his beloved and their growing child. His rage, though never directed at her, becomes so fierce that even Rey is nearly frightened of it. He obliterates half their furniture when she burns her hand on a too-hot dinner tray, and she sees him nearly kill one of his officers when the unfortunate woman delivers news of a small rebellion on some nothing little planet. The irony of the fact that Rey talks him down from that incident herself—convinces him that these people are too pathetic to considered a threat—does not escape her. But while she would happily watch her husband’s entire empire burn to the ground, she is not so far gone as to stand idly by as one woman, one woman Rey has to look in the eye as she dies, gasps for air in Kylo’s hold. So Rey puts her hand on her husband’s arm and comforts him, strokes his ego, belittles the brave rebels who may very well be lead by men and women she used to fight with. 

 

And when the officer falls to the ground with a desperate inhalation, Rey sees something surprising in her eyes before she scrambles away: Gratitude. Awe. Respect. 

 

This is still sharp in her memory three months later, when Kylo is on the floor weeping with his head pressed to her belly. This has become a common pose for the pair of them. The baby is soon to arrive, and he is sure he’ll ruin it. 

 

“I’ve failed you in so many ways, Rey,” he growls, fingers pressing to meet their child’s kicking foot. “It shouldn’t have been the way it was.”

 

She hums noncommittally, unsure precisely which transgression he refers to. Killing everyone else she’s ever loved? Forcing her to marry him? Putting on a show of subjugating and humiliating her in order to appease his followers? But the child has been pressing into her ribs all day, and it’s gentler in its movements when Kylo speaks. It’s growing stronger in the Force as it grows larger inside her, and it feels more like Kylo every day. She feels almost as if they’re vibrating on the same frequency, Kylo and the baby. She does not want to think about the fact that the Force radiating from her womb feels like a discordant note most of the time. She does not want to think about the fact that it sings in harmony with what comes off of Kylo when he lays against her and weeps. So she strokes his hair to encourage him, to make him keep speaking and unknowingly soothing the child she can only just barely admit is already full of darkness. She feels both husband and baby begin to calm. 

 

“I can’t believe I let him touch you,” he whispers after a long beat between one apology and the next. 

 

She thinks he means Finn for a brief moment, and then she realizes it’s Hux. 

 

Hux, who goaded Kylo into turning her into a glorified sex slave in the first place. Hux, who groped and humiliated her on her wedding night. Hux, who insisted he get to see recorded evidence of her deflowering.

 

Hux, who is so clearly desperate to stage a coup that she’s surprised Kylo hasn’t thrown him out the airlock yet. Ambitious, slimy, pliable Hux. 

 

And she thinks of the flash of loyalty she’d seen in that young officer’s eyes the day she kept Kylo from cutting her down. 

 

“It kills me to see him walking around so smug,” she says, and the words feel like they’re coming from someone else. Or maybe she just wishes the words felt that way. Maybe she knows exactly who she’s become. “It kills me to see he knows he has so much power over my life.”

 

Kylo snaps up, eyes wild. There he is, her rabid dog of a prince. 

  
“He doesn’t have _any_ power over—”

 

Her stoney look silences him. Now she pauses, lets the wheels turn in his head without her machinations. He understands now; he sees that he’s no Emperor at all if he has to bow to the whims of his underlings. Why had he ever been so desperate to keep them satisfied? How could he have let them think Rey was beneath them? She sees horror grow in his glistening eyes, and no small amount of rage. Again, she pities him. There is genuine tenderness when she reaches out to cup his face, because he is *pitiable*. 

 

“I just wish I felt safer here,” she says finally, simply. “For the baby.”

 

She might as well have signed Hux’s death warrant herself. Now all she has to do is save him. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey can’t be sure that Kylo will torture Hux instead of killing him the first chance he gets, but she decides it doesn’t matter much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last night’s chapter was so short that I compulsively wrote this one on my phone while I ate lunch. I don’t actually take lunch breaks so... don’t get used to it? <3
> 
> Edited to add: I’ve updated tags as requested because apparently some of you just realized Rey is super dark in this ;-) sorry for the confusion. And yes, Kylo is super unhinged. I personally don’t see that as OOC. Our favorite emo murder prince is pretty unhinged, y’all. Xoxoxo

Rey can’t be sure that Kylo will torture Hux instead of killing him the first chance he gets, but she decides it doesn’t matter much. Yes, she has a plan. A plan so dark it almost makes her shiver to think of it. But if this all ends with a terrible, loathsome man dead instead of the uprising she hopes to foster, well, she can find other ways to fan a rebellion. She has nothing but time.

 

She doesn’t see her husband for three days, but she knows his whereabouts by the way Hux’s shrieks and moans echo across the ship—a vessel that’s now so tense hardly anyone dares make a single sound. She knows she could stop this at any time, but she wants Kylo to feel it’s his idea to come for her. And he does. Trembling, covered in another man’s blood. He’s mad with adrenaline and sleep deprivation, and his hand grips Rey’s too tightly as he leads her down the silent halls.

 

“Here,” he chokes out, flinging open the door of a cell not unlike the one he once kept her in. “This is what happens to anyone who hurts… anyone who  _ disrespects  _ my Empress.”

 

Armitage Hux may be slight in comparison to his master, but he is not an insignificant man. Rey can recall the ease with which he hoisted her up to carry her on her wedding day. 

 

Now, he lays crumpled like some small insect smashed by a careless child’s attention. His face is purple and black and swollen beyond recognition—maybe, she thinks, beyond repair. There’s blood on every bit of his skin. She thinks some of his fingernails might be missing. She doesn’t look long enough to find out for sure. 

 

Mindful of her belly, now eight months gone with a child she keeps trying and failing to think fondly of, Rey kneels down to speak to the broken man Kylo has presented at her feet.

 

“Hello, Hux,” she says softly, sweetly. She brushes a hand through his hair in a tender gesture. He winces, which makes something broken in his face protest with a grotesque pop, and Kylo stiffens slightly. 

 

“Kylo, my love,” she looks up to her husband with a patient but slightly disappointed look. “I think he’s had enough, wouldn’t you agree?”

 

“I...thought you’d be...pleased,” he stammers, face white.

 

Rey clicks her tongue and stands, taking the hand he offers for support. She gives him a benevolent smile. “Oh Kylo,” she murmurs. She kisses him softly. “I’m pleased that you’re taking action to protect me and the baby. I’m  _ so _ pleased you’re taking care of us. And I don’t give a kriff what happens to Hux. You could throw him out the airlock for all I care.”

 

It’s a testament to the severity of the general’s injures, Rey muses, that this suggestion doesn’t seem to phase him. He lets his swollen eyes slide shut in resolve. 

 

“ _ But _ ,” Rey begins, and she thinks she sees his eyelids crack open ever so slightly in surprise, “don’t you think it would be good to have his army see what you’ve done to him?”

 

Kylo’s eyes burn with desire as he begins to comprehend her meaning. He loves her cunning, her wisdom, her willingness to give into the Dark. He adores that his bride wants her enemy humiliated and forced to serve her.

 

He pulls her into a passionate kiss, backing them up to a chair in the corner so she can settle on his lap. She wonders, as his hands wander, if he’s going to fuck her right there with Hux trying not to whimper on the floor. There would be something rather poetic about it, given that the general had once demanded entrance to the consummation of their wedding. But while Kylo slips his hands briefly beneath her clothes to squeeze and caress her skin, he doesn’t do anything more. 

 

“Hux,” he says some minutes later, voice breathy and low. “You’re going to crawl here and pledge fealty to your Empress, who has so mercifully asked me to spare your pathetic life.”

 

He stands and lifts her up, repositioning them so she sits on his lap facing the center of the room. Hux, after a moment of hesitation—proud reluctance or pure confusion, Rey can’t be sure—starts to drag himself to them. It’s obvious his legs are useless. She hopes he’ll walk again; a serious impairment might make him less useful to her. It takes him a full minute to make the journey, smearing blood all the way.

 

“Empress Rey,” he rasps, trying to drag himself up to his knees to meet her gaze. When that fails, he settles down in a pose of supplication, his body bent and his face near her feet. 

 

“Forgive me, I beg you,” he says. “I am utterly at your command, on this day and for all my days.” 

 

Rey probes at his mind as he speaks and barely fights a self-satisfied grin. He is exactly as she expected; he still looks down on her, but he sees now that she wields all the raw, raging power of his unhinged ruler. He believes she is the only person who could possibly control Kylo. He’s believes she is the only person who could take Kylo down. He wants to help her do it. He hopes she’ll agree. 

 

Rey is no fool. She knows Hux is a poor ally at best, and a vicious man who believes in the kind of Empire he and Kylo are running, even if he thinks Kylo is too wild and cruel to run it properly. He also thinks he’ll be able to dispose of her as soon as Kylo is dealt with, and plans to do so. But Rey can worry about that later. She presses a thought into his mind, knowing her husband is too drunk on lust and pride to intercept the message.

 

_ We will put an end to this, Armitage.  _

 

And with the slight widening of her enemy’s bloodshot eyes, Rey knows her coup has begun. 

  
  
  
  



	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just some afternoon treason in the royal gardens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Okay, so. I'm sorry!
> 
> I initially took a break from this because I was getting some weirdly critical comments (what is this, twitter?!) and had a book proposal to focus on finishing. Apologies for being so flaky, but writing fic is an ~outlet~ for me, and I just was not feeling good about it anymore. And once I got out of the head space of this story, it was hard to pick it back up! But now that the book is almost ready to go to auction, I've got the itch to write fun fics in my spare moments again. And when I started an AHS story, I was so surprised to see some of you commenting on it begging for more of this one! Consider this a bridge chapter: I'm dipping my toes back in and hope to wrap this up with a handful of updates over the next couple of months. Thanks for sticking with it <3

Three things happen in very short order: Hux, barely recovered from the worst of his injuries, retakes his post to serve as a reminder that no one—not even the commander of Kylo’s entire fleet—is safe from the Emperor’s wrath. Rey gives birth to her first child, a girl that looks so much like Han in her squirming infancy that it makes the woman weep. And, finally, Kylo loses what was left of his mind. 

 

He is  _ obsessed _ with their daughter; protecting her from seemingly endless perceived threats of danger, raising her to some glorious future he’s dreamed up and determined to be a vision from the force, not  _ ruining _ her the way his parents and Snoke ruined him. 

 

Rey knows she isn’t helping his mental state by naming the girl Rose and threatening to change it to Leia when he gives her a weary look. 

 

But there is also this: Rey loves the girl. She would not have given her dearest friend’s name to a writhing and screaming mess of darkness that meant nothing to her. It may have felt like Kylo’s carbon copy was growing in her womb, but the moment the child is born Rey realizes the infant isn’t all bad. She’s malleable, and just because she takes after her father doesn’t mean she can’t be Rey’s, too. After all, there were so many could-have-been versions of their love story where Kylo and Rey were two imperfect halves of a perfect whole. This child, she thinks, can take his place in that. This little girl will join her in the gray. 

 

Kylo has every intention of being an attentive father (not to mention his intentions of getting Rey good and pregnant again as quickly as possible) but his constant terror that harm will befall the youngling soon sends him careening back out into the galaxy. He becomes convinced—quite reasonably, Rey has to admit—that he himself will somehow wreck the child with his own trauma if he tries to parent her, so he channels his paternal instincts into devastating military campaigns. He’s only held Rose a handful of times in the year since her birth, but he has spent nearly every waking hour killing anyone who might hurt the royal family, and maintaining a fierce and massive Empire for her to inherit. This is the fatherhood he will allow himself, and it means Rey and Rose are mostly left alone. 

 

That suits just fine, especially since Kylo has now made it  _ very _ clear that Rey deserves respect. Now she doesn’t just amass supporters in the form of servants and soldiers who think what the Emperor has done to her is unforgivable and hope to show her kindness in the small ways they can; she also has the attention of his loyal subjects—and, perhaps most importantly, the most disloyal pieces of shit in his army. The ones who want to take his power and yield it even more terribly. 

 

This is how Armitage Hux becomes the Empress's chief companion and confidant. He’s not so bad, as a broken man. Yes, he’s still conniving and sneers at anyone he sees as beneath him. But Rey sees now that he’s not so much  _ evil _ as he is amoral. He tells her about his demanding father, his sad and lonely childhood, his scramble to power. She sees that he’s a man driven by fear, and she can work with fear. 

 

He’s visiting them in their private gardens at the palace on Naboo, Rose toddling around and babbling nonsense at him. She likes tugging at Hux’s red hair, which has finally grown back save for a long white streak of a scar where Kylo cracked his skull. Rey can now read Hux’s mind as easily as she’s ever read anyone’s, and while she knows he still assumes he can dispose of her when the time comes, he no longer plans on  _ killing _ her—depositing her in some sort of luxurious exile, perhaps, or maybe even making her his own consort, but not ending her with a blaster to the heart—and this softening is largely due to a genuine affection for Rose. 

 

“The Emperor sends his regards from the front,” Hux drawls, his voice very nearly carrying the same hint of sarcasm he used with Kylo before his torture. “He wishes he could have joined me in this visit. But you know how it is—there are always more worlds to conquer. He trusts I will report back on your welfare, and I look forward to telling him how serene and content his bride and heir are in Naboo.” 

 

Rey hums in agreement, smiling slightly as Rose tries to clamber into the man’s lap. “Yes, please do tell my husband that all is well and as it should be. He... needn't trouble himself with a visit, when there are matters so much more pressing for him to attend to," she smirks a little. "He’s certainly leaning on you to run the day to day aspects of the Empire more and more, isn’t he?”

 

Hux meets her eyes with a loaded look. 

 

“Indeed, your highness,” he says. “Your belief in my repentance and loyalty means the world to him. He’s happy to have me handle matters of diplomacy while he sees to matters of war.”

 

Rey has no reason to think they might be listened in on, but she knows it’s already a risk to have Hux thinking treasonous thoughts in the same room as Kylo. The man is unhinged, but he still has power if he ever thinks clearly enough to use it. The mental control Hux learned to survive Snoke's wrath can only hold up against so much intrusion. So she speaks as if in a bugged room, not leaving her new ally with any damning words ringing through his head. 

 

“It is fortunate that my husband has such a loyal second in command,” she murmurs. “Someone more ambitious might take advantage of all that power.”

 

“Quite,” Hux replies just as softly. “A foolish man could even encourage the discontent of his underlings. It is fortunate that I have the Empire's best interests in mind.”

 

They sit in silence for a moment, listening to the trickling of the fountain beside them and Rose’s shrill giggles. Rey probe’s the man’s willing mind for images of her husband, ranting and raving and looking every day more like his grandfather. If Snoke had turned him dark, his love for Rey had turned him half mad and his fear for Rose was destroying him. 

 

“When?” she finally asks.

 

He exhales, standing up and wincing slightly as the weight settles on his bad leg, and bows low. “Soon," he says. She nods, scooping Rose into her arms as he walks away. She kisses her child's head, unable to look into the girl's familiar amber eyes. 


End file.
